455 papers
This study reveals that global invasions of the ambrosia beetle *Euwallacea fornicatus* are structured by a dominant, genetically depauperate lineage derived from a bridgehead population, while subsequent hybridization with local lineages in regions like South Africa facilitates the purging of deleterious mutations, thereby enhancing the biosecurity threat posed by these invasive beetles.
Population genomics analysis of the grass puffer (*Takifugu alboplumbeus*) reveals that geographic differences in lunar-regulated spawning timing between western and eastern Japanese populations are driven by variations in the free-running circadian period associated with missense mutations in the *prrt1l* gene.
This study utilized a validated multiplex deep amplicon sequencing assay to demonstrate that *Fasciola hepatica* populations infecting UK ruminants exhibit limited genetic structure and high gene flow across geographic regions, likely driven by livestock movement and parasite adaptation.
This study demonstrates that bacterial transcription factor binding sites can evolve exaptively through smooth, navigable adaptive landscapes where small, adaptive mutations readily generate new regulatory functions, often via intermediate states characterized by transcriptional crosstalk.
Using long-term experimental evolution in *Drosophila melanogaster*, this study demonstrates that substantial genetic variation persists under intense directional selection through balancing-selection mechanisms, enabling rapid phenotypic reversal and the redeployment of hidden low-frequency alleles when selection regimes are switched.
A re-analysis of ancient DNA from the Mazongshan site refutes the recent claim of finding hinnies (horse-donkey hybrids) from 400–160 BCE, revealing that the four specimens previously identified as hybrids were actually donkeys, thereby necessitating new data to support the historical role of hinnies in trans-regional trade.
This study characterizes the colourless protist *Ciliophrys* sp. Baltic as a rare example of secondary plastid loss in a photosynthetic lineage, revealing that it compensates for the resulting biosynthetic deficiencies by hosting a metabolically interactive bacterial endosymbiont, *Candidatus* Penulousia baltica.
This paper challenges the prevailing view that antagonistic pleiotropy rarely maintains stable polymorphism by demonstrating, through geometric analysis, that a broad range of dominance schemes (beyond just dominance reversal) across various selection models can readily support balanced allelic variation without requiring specific constraints on selection strength or dominance magnitude.
This study reveals that mammalian brain evolution exhibits fine-grained mosaic dynamics at the sub-cellular level, where the dendritic transcriptome shows significantly higher evolutionary divergence than the soma while maintaining conserved core functions through a combination of adaptive modulation and system drift.
By developing a high-resolution genetic panel, this study reveals that while the kelp forest gastropod *Kelletia kelletii* exhibits high self-recruitment in its historical range, its expanding range is characterized by low initial self-recruitment followed by increased survival of locally spawned individuals, suggesting that post-settlement viability selection drives differential survival in this high gene flow marine system.
Contrary to the expectation of rapid adaptive evolution at the host-parasite interface, this study reveals that the *Toxoplasma gondii* microneme proteins MIC13, MIC12, and MIC16 are primarily shaped by purifying selection and exhibit phylogenetic discordance rather than positive selection.
This study demonstrates that somatic Programmed DNA Elimination is widespread across the Rhabditidae family of free-living nematodes, having been identified in 17 out of 25 newly screened species and 12 of the 17 tested genera, thereby providing a diverse collection of genetically tractable models to investigate the mechanisms and evolutionary origins of this phenomenon.
By integrating phylogenomic data from 490 nuclear loci and mitochondrial genomes with a fossilized birth-death dating model, this study reveals that while the Cicadidae family originated in the Cretaceous, four of its five subfamilies underwent extensive worldwide diversification shortly after the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction.
This study demonstrates that despite extreme genealogical discordance among Sebastes rockfishes, a phyloGWAS framework incorporating discordant gene histories can successfully identify genetic variants associated with longevity while effectively controlling false positives.
By massively expanding the available dataset with 51 new organellar genomes, this study reconstructs a robust eustigmatophyte phylogeny and reveals distinct evolutionary patterns between their stable plastomes and highly variable mitogenomes, while uncovering the origins of specific genes and identifying novel mitochondrial open reading frames unique to this algal class.
The paper proposes that RNA-ligand binding mitigates evolutionary dead-ends caused by neutral confinement by reducing the selective advantage of hyper-stable structures, thereby preserving mutational access to diverse functional conformations.
This study demonstrates that genome architecture, specifically chromosome number and gene-gene interactions, jointly dictates the repeatability of polygenic adaptation, with high chromosome counts facilitating parallel evolutionary responses through recombination-driven assembly of coadapted alleles, whereas chromosomal fusions in low-count genomes can constrain repeatability by linking alternative haplotypes.
By systematically analyzing deep mutational scanning data of imidazole glycerol-phosphate dehydratase and other proteins, this study reveals that super compensatory substitutions, often located at solvent-exposed residues, can restore function to nonfunctional variants and flatten fitness landscapes, thereby enhancing protein evolutionary robustness across diverse genetic backgrounds.
This study demonstrates that predation by the nematode *Pristionchus pacificus* drives the evolution of *Myxococcus xanthus* aggregative multicellularity, revealing complex inter-trophic interactions and strong historical contingency influenced by antibiotic resistance.
This study identifies 21 evolutionarily conserved "lonely genes" located within massive, ancient gene deserts that predominantly encode cell adhesion molecules, revealing that their unique nuclear positioning at the lamina creates a regulatory vulnerability where dependence on specific chromatin modifiers for expression contributes to neurodevelopmental disorders.